Enough vilification, declaring every rupee I’ve earned: Arnab Goswami

Republic TV Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami and his family have announced that they will publicly declare all personal financial details, including income received and expenses, since 2004. This follows a series of allegations of paying money to rig TRPs of news channels, leaks of Whatsapp chats with ex-CEO of BARC India, Partho Dasgupta, and intense media scrutiny in the last few weeks.

Referring to the “revelations” made by Dasgupta, who is currently under arrest in the TRP manipulation case, in a release issued, Republic Media Network maintained that “an alleged statement” was “extracted under duress in police custody from Partho Dasgupta”. The statement further said that Dasgupta’s wife, Samrajini Dasgupta, had made multiple public statements that he was physically tortured to falsely implicate Arnab Goswami.

“It has been stated by his wife that Partho Dasgupta was assaulted in custody and told ‘This will not be over till you name Arnab Goswami’. These statements, which prove the illegal methods being used to somehow implicate a journalist for taking on the establishment, are available in the public domain and any rational mind can see through the brazenness of the conspiracy,” the Republic statement stresses.

The Republic statement further said, “Arnab Goswami and his wife and Senior Executive Editor of the Republic Media Network, Samyabrata Ray Goswami, are going to publicly declare all their income, salaries, expenditures, loans, insurance policies, educational expenses, medical expenses, and their entire bank accounts since 2004, when they moved to Mumbai. They will be putting all their personal financial details in a document and publicly handing it over to the CBI, the ED and, should the Mumbai Police be interested, to them as well. Along with this, they will be disclosing all details of their taxes paid, mortgage payments on their home, and all EMI details to the agencies as well. This is the first time that a media professional and a public personality is disclosing every single rupee of their financial transactions – that too of the last 16 years.”

Arnab Goswami was quoted as saying, “Enough vilification and lies, I am declaring every rupee I have earned and spent.” He also challenged his to “follow my example and do the same”.

The Republic statement slammed the attempts at trying to create prejudice as deeply conspiratorial, and reaffirmed that Goswami had not made any of the statements which were being attributed to him “by political parties and sections of the media opposed to Republic”. “Spin-doctoring and false attribution of statements made by third parties to Arnab Goswami has become the norm in a section of the media off late,” the statement maintained.